Canoe Ventures promotes Runnels to VP of marketing, communications

Canoe Ventures, the joint advertising venture launched by the nation’s six largest cable operators, announced today that Dana Runnels was promoted to vice president of marketing and communications.

In her new position, Runnels is responsible for developing and overseeing Canoe’s integrated marketing efforts to drive business strategies, as well as managing the company’s marketing and communications team.

Since joining Canoe Ventures in December 2008, Runnells has managed the company’s media relations and strategic communications efforts. According to Canoe Ventures, she has developed thought leadership programs to further the company’s goals of developing television into the next great digital marketing medium and played an active role in coordinating with Canoe’s partners to ensure both alignment and accuracy within the realm of advanced advertising across the industry.

“Dana has helped lay the foundation on which we continue to build our marketing and communications efforts,” said Vicki Lins, chief marketing officer at Canoe Ventures. “She will play a critical role going forward as we establish momentum in the marketplace.”

Prior to joining Canoe Ventures, Runnells was senior communications director at Comcast Spotlight, the advertising sales division of Comcast Cable. She joined the Spotlight team in 2003 where she managed public relations, internal communications and online marketing efforts, including development of ComcastSpotlight.com and all e-marketing efforts tied to its sub-sites. Runnells joined Comcast Spotlight as the division’s first public relations specialist and managed media relations for the division’s corporate headquarters.

Canoe Ventures was formed in 2008 as a joint venture between Bright House Networks, Cablevision Systems, Charter Communications, Comcast Corp., Cox Communications and Time Warner Cable.

Canoe Ventures has previously said it would launch its RFI (request for information) interactive advertising campaign sometime this spring.